Winchester, MA The Archivematica + DuraCloud hosted service has launched a beta test with pilot partners that will be ongoing from October 2014 to January 2015. The organizations participating in the pilot are:

Ensuring that robust Archivematica Archival Information Packages (AIPs) have a secure long-term home is the idea behind the new Archivematica + DuraCloud hosted service. The new integrated service is designed to provide users with a robust preservation workflow plus long-­term archiving in a single hosted solution.

The DuraCloud cloud­-based archiving and preservation service platform manages and preserves digital objects. DuraCloud enables user management and preservation of content without locking into a single cloud provider. DuraCloud also features value­-added services such as regular bit-­level health checks for all content stored in DuraCloud. The platform is open-­source and free to download, but also available as a hosted solution from DuraSpace.

Archivematica is an open­-source tool for ingesting digital objects and preparing them for long­-term preservation. Archivematica accommodates a variety of OAIS-­based digital curation workflows, and provides a flexible framework for normalizing ingested digital objects to durable, preservation-­friendly formats. The system performs a series of preservation micro­services and generates Archival Information Packages (AIPs) consisting of the ingested digital objects, any normalized preservation masters generated during processing, and detailed PREMIS metadata packaged into standard METS XML files.

The powerful combined Archivematica + DuraCloud service meets all 21 aspects of managing and preserving digital objects identified by the IMLS funded white paper “From Theory to Action", which analyzes and compares digital preservation solutions for under-resourced institutions. The service will be launched to the general public early 2015, based on the completion of a successful pilot.